gel analysis software

[Roman Fried]

Hi everybody

I have to evaluate software for gel analysis. We need to analyse
1d and 2d gels.
Up to now i looked at the following programs:

1D:

Imagemaster 1D, Dos, Pharmacia
Phoretix 1D, Win, Phoretix

Cybertec 1D, Win, Cybertec
Imagequant, Win, MD
Bandleader, Win, Shareware


2D:

Melanie/Elsie, UNIX, PD
Phoretix 2D, Win, Phoretix
Imagemaster 2D, Dos, Pharmacia

Now I have the following questions:

1. Do you work with one of these programs? If yes, what's positive
and what's negative.

2. Do you know any other programs, I should look at?

3. There are three type of grayscale images, 8 Bit, 12 Bit and 16 Bit. 
Is it really an advantage to work with 12 or 16 Bit images? Pharmacia 
says no, their programm reduces 16 Bit images to 8 Bit. Phoretix and 
Molecular Dynamics work with both formats.

4. Is there an advantage in using UNIX programs? At our institute most
people work with Windows. So i would prefer a Windows solution, but we
have a Sun SPARCstation2 which could be used for this purpose.


Ok that's it. Maybe i post some more questions later. Please mail answer's
to me. If i get any answers, i will compile them and post it to this 
news-group.

Thanks 

Roman


Roman Fried
Institut fuer Klinische Chemie
Universitaetsspital Zuerich
CH-8091 Zuerich

E-Mail : rmf at ikc.unizh.ch